Cost Of Cooperation Research Articles

Trouble comes in threes: Core stability in minimum cost connection networks

We consider a generalization of the Minimum Cost Spanning Tree (MCST) model, called the Minimum Cost Connection Network (MCCN) model, where network users have connection demands in the form of a pair of nodes they want connected directly or indirectly. For a fixed network, which satisfies all connection demands, the problem consists of allocating the total cost of the network among its users. Thereby every MCCN problem induces a cooperative cost game where the cost of every coalition of users is the cost of an efficient network satisfying the demand of the users in the coalition. Unlike the MCST-model, we show that the core of the induced cost game in the MCCN-model can be empty even when all locations are demanded. We therefore consider sufficient conditions for non-empty core. It is shown that: when the efficient network and the demand graph (i.e. the graph consisting of the direct connections between the pairs of demanded nodes) consist of the same components, the induced cost game has non-empty core (Theorem 1); and, when the demand graph consists of at most two components, the induced cost game has non-empty core (Theorem 2).

Combining accounting practices to create an effective cost management system in the inter-organizational relationships of agro-entities

In the article, based on the theoretical analysis and study of accounting practices, a set of elements was formed for their use in the system of managing the costs of inter-organizational interaction of partners. The peculiarities of the combined system of calculation of the cost of agricultural products within the framework of inter-organizational cooperation, the existing accounting practices are described. Advantages of introduction and use of inter-organizational accounting and cost calculation system for efficient management of costs of inter-organizational cooperation of agro-entities have been identified. A system for managing the costs of inter-organizational cooperation in agro-industrial complex organizations has been developed and described. Possible problem areas are identified when introducing these calculation systems into the practical activities of agro-formations.

A Study on the Introduction of Cash Accounting Scheme in Tax Invoice for Small Businesses

사업자는 재화 또는 용역을 공급하고 공급시기에 세금계산서를 발급한다. 그러나 그 공급시기가 언제인지 모호하여 적법한 시기에 세금계산서를 발급하기 위해서는 납세협력비용이 발생된다. 만일 잘못된 시기에 세금계산서를 발급할 경우 가산세와 매입세액 불공제 등 과도한 세법상 제재를 받게 된다. 공급자가 외상으로 거래하는 경우 공급자는 부가가치세를 거래징수하지 못한 상태에서 자기부담으로 먼저 부가가치세를 납부하여야 하므로 자금부담이 발생한다. 또한 공급자는 공급받는 자의 파산 등으로 거래징수할 부가가치세의 회수가 불가능한 경우에는 대손세액공제를 받아야 하는데 그 적용요건이 엄격하여 대손세액공제 신청에 있어 납세협력비용이 발생함은 물론 이를 적용받지 못할 경우 장기적인 자금 압박으로 이어지게 된다. 아울러 과세관청 입장에서도 대손세액공제 제도의 운영으로 막대한 행정력이 소요되어 사회적 비용이 크다. 이러한 외상거래에 따른 경제적 부담들은 소규모 사업자에게 발생할 가능성이 상대적으로 높다. 따라서 독일과 영국의 예와 같이 소규모 사업자의 경우 세금계산서를 공급시기가 아닌 공급대가를 현금으로 지급받는 시점에 발급하도록 하는 현금회계제도를 도입함이 타당하다. 세금계산서 현금회계제도는 소규모 사업자의 납세협력비용을 절감하고 자금부담을 해소하며 세금계산서 발급시기의 오류를 줄임으로써 과도한 세법상 제재를 회피할 수 있게 한다. 다만 세금계산서 현금회계제도를 도입할 경우 납세자가 현금 지급시기를 조정하여 납세의무의 발생시기를 조정할 우려가 있다는 지적이 있으나 이는 현행 제도에서도 공급시기를 조정하여 나타날 수 있는 문제로 보인다.A businessman shall supply goods or services and issue tax invoices at the time of supply. However, tax cooperation costs are incurred to issue a tax invoice at a legitimate time because the timing of the supply is unclear. If a tax invoice is issued at a wrong time, it will be subject to excessive tax laws such as additional taxes and unfair purchase tax. When a supplier transacts on credit, the supplier must first pay the value-added tax at its own expense without collecting the value-added tax, which results in a financial burden. In addition, suppliers must receive a tax deduction if they cannot collect VAT due to bankruptcy of the supplier, and the application requirements are strict, resulting in tax cooperation costs in applying for the tax credit. In addition, from the perspective of the tax office, the operation of the loan-loss tax deduction system requires a huge amount of administrative power, which is a huge social cost. The economic burden of these credit transactions is relatively likely to occur for small businesses. Therefore, it is reasonable to introduce a cash accounting system for small businesses, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, to issue tax invoices at the time of payment of supply considerations rather than supply periods. The tax invoice cash accounting system allows small businesses to avoid sanctions under excessive tax laws by reducing the cost of tax cooperation, eliminating the burden of funds, and reducing errors in issuing tax invoices. However, some point out that if the tax invoice cash accounting system is introduced, taxpayers may adjust the timing of the tax obligation by adjusting the cash payment period, but this seems to be a problem that can be caused by adjusting the supply period in the current system.

Emergence of cooperation in spatial social dilemmas with expulsion

In social dilemmas cooperators pay costs for other individuals to receive benefits, whereas defectors are the benefactors but do not provide anything in return. What is more, except in the snowdrift game, defective strategies are evolutionarily stable against invasion by cooperative strategies under strong selection. It is thus of interest to determine under which conditions the spontaneous emergence of cooperation is possible in a population consisting entirely of defectors. To that effect, we here want to concentrate on exploring how expulsion influences the emergent dynamics of cooperation in the context of the spatial social dilemmas. Interestingly, expulsion can indeed support the emergence of cooperators for all classes of social dilemma games. By analyzing the spatial expansion and invasion processes of cooperative individuals, we further reveal that merely a 1×2 (or 2×1) cluster of expulsive cooperators, introduced for example by means of mutations, is required for invading and completely dominating a spatial population of expulsive defectors provided that the cost of cooperation is no larger than a constant value.

Focusing climate negotiations on a uniform common commitment can promote cooperation

International cooperation on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, disarmament, or free trade needs to be negotiated. The success of such negotiations depends on how they are designed. In the context of international climate change policy, it has been proposed [e.g., M. L. Weitzman J. Assoc. Environ. Resour. Econ. 1, 29-49 (2014)] that shifting the negotiation focus to a uniform common commitment (such as a uniform minimum carbon price) would lead to more ambitious cooperation. Yet, a proof-of-concept for this important claim is lacking. Based on game theoretical analyses, we present experimental evidence that strongly supports this conjecture. In our study, human subjects negotiate contributions to a public good. Subjects differ in their benefits and costs of cooperation. Participation in the negotiations and all commitments are voluntary. We consider treatments in which agreements are enforceable, and treatments in which they have to be self-enforcing. In both situations, negotiating a uniform common commitment is more successful in promoting cooperation than negotiating individual commitments (as in the Paris Agreement) and complex common commitments that tailor the commitment to the specific situation of each party (as attempted with the Kyoto Protocol). Furthermore, as suggested by our model, a uniform common commitment benefits most from being enforced.

A collective risk dilemma for tourism restrictions under the COVID-19 context

The current COVID-19 pandemic has impacted millions of people and the global economy. Tourism has been one the most affected economic sectors because of the mobility restrictions established by governments and uncoordinated actions from origin and destination regions. The coordination of restrictions and reopening policies could help control the spread of virus and enhance economies, but this is not an easy endeavor since touristic companies, citizens, and local governments have conflicting interests. We propose an evolutionary game model that reflects a collective risk dilemma behind these decisions. To this aim, we represent regions as players, organized in groups; and consider the perceived risk as a strict lock-down and null economic activity. The costs for regions when restricting their mobility are heterogeneous, given that the dependence on tourism of each region is diverse. Our analysis shows that, for both large populations and the EU NUTS2 case study, the existence of heterogeneous costs enhances global agreements. Furthermore, the decision on how to group regions to maximize the regions’ agreement of the population is a relevant issue for decision makers to consider. We find out that a layout of groups based on similar costs of cooperation boosts the regions’ agreements and avoid the risk of having a total lock-down and a negligible tourism activity. These findings can guide policy makers to facilitate agreements among regions to maximize the tourism recovery.

Is council co-operation cost efficient? An empirical analysis of waste collection in Spanish local government

ABSTRACT Although there is an extensive literature examining the fiscal outcomes of municipal mergers and privatization, much less research has focused on council co-operation. This paper compares the relative cost of waste services under inter-municipal co-operation and stand-alone production by local councils in Spain from 2009 to 2015. Co-operation produced significant cost savings and the factors affecting municipal waste collection costs differed between these two modes of production.

The effect of variability in payoffs on average abundance in two-player linear games under symmetric mutation

Classical studies in evolutionary game theory assume constant payoffs. Randomly fluctuating environments in real populations make this assumption idealistic. In this paper, we study randomized two-player linear games in a finite population in a succession of birth-death events according to a Moran process and in the presence of symmetric mutation. Introducing identity measures under neutrality that depend on the mutation rate and calculating these in the limit of a large population size by using the coalescent process, we study the first-order effect of the means, variances and covariances of the payoffs on average abundance in the stationary state under mutation and selection. This shows how the average abundance of a strategy is driven not only by its mean payoffs but also by the variances and covariances of its payoffs. In Prisoner’s Dilemmas with additive cost and benefit for cooperation, where constant payoffs always favor the abundance of defection, stochastic fluctuations in the payoffs can change the strategy that is more abundant on average in the stationary state. The average abundance of cooperation is increased if the variance of any payoff to cooperation against cooperation or defection, or their covariance, is decreased, or if the variance of any payoff to defection against cooperation or defection, or their covariance, is increased. This is also the case for a Prisoner’s Dilemma with independent payoffs that is repeated a random number of times. As for the mutation rate, it comes into play in the coefficients of the variances and covariances that determine average abundance. Increasing the mutation rate can enhance or lessen the condition for a strategy to be more abundant on average than another.

Game Research on Property Right Evolution of Small Water Conservancy Projects under the Conflict of Multi-Stakeholders

The property right of small water conservancy projects (hereinafter referred to as SWCP) currently can be defined as three different forms: public property rights, private property rights, and a combination of public and private property rights. The main participants are the government, farmers, and other organizations. The interests and demands of different subjects are different, so the property rights structure of the SWCPs are also different. In order to explore the evolutionary law of the property right structure of SWCPs in the case of conflicting demands of multiple stakeholders, a game model for the evolutionary law of each main body of SWCPs was proposed in this paper. By analyzing the feasibility of the game of multi-stakeholder appeal conflicts, a multi-stakeholder game model was established. The game and evolution of each stakeholder were analyzed, and the evolution of the property rights of SWCPs under the game of each subject was simulated and analyzed. The research results show that if the incentives and constraints of cooperation between farmers and cooperatives, associations and other organizations are greater than the cost of cooperation, farmers will participate in the cooperation and invest in elements actively, thus promoting the integration of elements, thereby contributing resource complementarity among participants and leaving more cooperation surplus. If the benefits of cooperation between the government and farmer organizations plus the total benefits of the incentive and restraint mechanism are greater than the total cost of active cooperation, furthermore, the incremental benefits of the incentive and restraint mechanism are not lower than the incremental costs of participating in the cooperative, then, farmer organizations are easier to get succeed. The research results have certain reference significance for the option of the property rights and management modes of SWCPs.

How Does the R&D Cooperation Path of Supply and Demand Network Enterprises Evolve?

To explore the complexity and uncertainty of R&D cooperation in supply and demand network (SDN) enterprises, this study used the evolutionary game theory and the duplicate dynamic equation to construct the R&D cooperation strategy selection model. Based on the perspective of knowledge spillover, the model investigated the influence of knowledge spillover, government reward, government penalty, cooperative cost, and R&D cooperation risk in the cooperation of SDN enterprises. Next, this study analyzed the stability and the system evolution path of the model. Finally, it used numerical simulation to vary the rationality of the model. Based on this research, there are some conclusions can be obtained: Firstly, the evolution of R&D cooperation strategy for SDN enterprises may eventually stabilize at cooperation or selfishness strategy under different situations. As for which strategy is ultimately stable, it is closely related to the construction of the initial payment matrix and the selection of initial parameters. Secondly, there are two stable states in the game system: cooperation and selfishness. If one party chooses cooperation and the other party chooses selfishness, the system will not be stable. Thirdly, knowledge spillover degree, government reward, government penalty, government penalty, cooperation cost, and cooperation risk are important factors that can influence the cooperation evolution of SDN enerprises. Fourth, under certain situations, if knowledge spillover degree, government reward, and government penalty increase, cooperation cost and cooperation risk decrease, the R&D cooperation in SDN enterprises will be improved. Related implications and suggestions are finally proposed, which can offer some valuable guidance for the development of SDN enterprises.

The impact of horizontal R&D cooperation on the climbing of the industrial cluster supply chain: from the perspective of the evolutionary game theory

Supply chain upgrade is a transformation process of supply chain operation efficiency and value realisation. The upgrading of an industrial cluster supply chain is of great practical significance to the development of China's cluster enterprises. As a kind of spatial economic organisation with geographical proximity and industrial relevance, supply chain network and industrial cluster create a favourable platform for enterprise cooperation. This paper studies the R&D cooperation of industrial clusters based on the perspective of the supply chain, constructs the evolutionary game model of R&D cooperation of horizontal enterprises in the cluster, and conducts numerical simulation analysis. The results show that: the impact mechanism of R&D investment, R&D cooperation risk, mutual trust level, R&D cooperation knowledge spillover, enterprise knowledge absorption capacity and R&D cooperation cost respectively to horizontal enterprise R&D cooperation in industrial cluster supply chain network. Finally, combined with the impact mechanism, it puts forward suggestions for realising the strategy and path of the supply chain climbing of China's industrial clusters.

Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation

Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation

Research on the Coordination Mechanism of Value Cocreation of Innovation Ecosystems: Evidence from a Chinese Artificial Intelligence Enterprise

This paper models the game process of the value cocreation of enterprises based on evolutionary game theory (EGT). The factors influencing value cocreation are found through mathematical analysis. Taking iFLYTEK as an example, a representative enterprise of artificial intelligence (AI) in China, six factors affecting value cocreation are verified, which are the excess return rate, the distribution coefficient of the excess return rate, coordination costs in the system, the cost‐sharing coefficient, imitation costs, and penalties. These six factors have a profound impact on value cocreation in the ecosystem. Through the case study of iFLYTEK, it is concluded that innovation ecosystems can enable small‐ and medium‐sized AI enterprises to grow. In order to build a sound ecosystem, we need to establish a mechanism to select partners, reduce the costs of cooperation, and strengthen the protection of intellectual property. At the beginning of the cooperation, it is necessary to establish a mechanism with clear responsibilities, rights, and interests. The conclusion is of great significance to the development of AI enterprises.

Time-accuracy trade-off and task partitioning of hygienic behavior among honey bee (Apis mellifera) workers

Behavioral specialization and cooperation are fundamental in the organization and success of social groups. Honey bee workers display hygienic behavior, defined as the detection, uncapping, and removal of unhealthy brood. We present detailed analyses of behavioral specialization and task partitioning among hygienic worker bees, focusing on uncapping of brood cells and removal of the cells’ content in freeze-killed brood assays. We demonstrate specialization of hygienic workers on either uncapping or removal and task partitioning among multiple individuals. Speed of hygiene decreases with the number of behavioral instances, suggesting a time cost for cooperation of multiple individuals. Additional analyses of an individual agent-based simulation of hygienic removal of Varroa-mite-infested brood demonstrate that erroneous removal of healthy brood can be reduced by task partitioning due to collective decision-making. Combined, our results indicate a speed-accuracy trade-off in the collective performance of hygienic behavior: Hygienic behavior may take longer when many individuals contribute and specialize on different tasks, but this organization of work also can prevent costly mistakes. This trade-off may explain the observed combination of elite workers and numerous other workers that contribute only little. Honey bees and other social animals form successful groups that are characterized by individual specialization on different tasks. Hygienic behavior of honey bees removes unhealthy brood from the nest and is important for the health of honey bee colonies. Here, we observed that individual worker bees specialize on either of the two main tasks involved in hygienic behavior: uncapping cells or removing brood. We also found that a few individuals perform the majority of the work and that the speed of hygienic behavior is higher when one individual works continuously instead of multiple individuals. Additionally, we show in computer simulations that the number of erroneous brood removals is decreased when separate workers contribute to the different aspects of hygienic behavior. Thus, our study indicates that a speed-accuracy trade-off might drive the evolution of task partitioning in hygienic behavior.

An Efficient Cooperative Transmission Based Opportunistic Broadcast Scheme in VANETs

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), quick and reliable multi-hop broadcasting is important for the dissemination of emergency warning messages. By scheduling multiple nodes to transmit messages concurrently and cooperatively, cooperative transmission based broadcast schemes may yield much better broadcast performance than conventional broadcast schemes. However, a cooperative transmission requires multiple relays to achieve strict synchronization on both time and frequency, which may induce high cost for a cooperative transmission process. In this paper, we analyze the cost and benefit of a cooperative transmission for data broadcasting in vehicular networks, and introduce a new metric called the single hop broadcast efficiency (SBE) to evaluate the overall broadcast performance. We propose an efficient, non-deterministic cooperation mechanism to reduce the cooperation cost. The mechanism maximizes the expected broadcast performance by selecting cooperators with the largest expected SBE value for a lead relay, and initiates cooperative broadcasting process when the expected SBE value is larger than that of a single-relay based broadcasting. Based on the non-deterministic mechanism, we propose an efficient, cooperative transmission based opportunistic broadcast (ECTOB) scheme which further utilizes rebroadcast to improve the reliability of the broadcast scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional ones.

How costly altruism survives? The rescue of both cooperation and voluntary sharing

Living in the environment full of competition and risk, individuals are supposed to pursue private interests. Defectors avoid the cost of cooperation and usually earn more. So defection seems to prevail in the population under natural selection. However, the costly cooperation abounds both in biological systems and human society, which attracts the interest of scholars in many fields. Income sharing is a simple and effective means of promoting cooperation. But most sharing mechanisms at present highly rely on enforcement. Sharing is always costly for the sharers, as same as cooperating. So voluntary sharing hardly survives without a reasonable evolution mechanism. In this work, we studied the coevolution of sharing and cooperation and found the failure of traditional sharing mechanisms on maintaining voluntary sharing. To rescue the voluntary sharing and cooperation, we proposed a fresh form of sharing mechanism, Temporary Interest Community (TIC) mechanism. According to our simulations, TIC mechanism successful rescues both voluntary sharing and cooperation to some extent, but it never eliminates the defection completely. Sharing is conductive to cooperation, while the development of cooperation inhibits sharing among population instead. In addition, we have also observed that sharing in a visionary population is more frequent and stable. So strengthening the memory of the group may stimulate more cooperation.

Joint Auction-Coalition Formation Framework for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning in UAV-Enabled Internet of Vehicles

Due to the advanced capabilities of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) components such as vehicles, Roadside Units (RSUs) and smart devices as well as the increasing amount of data generated, Federated Learning (FL) becomes a promising tool given that it enables privacy-preserving machine learning that can be implemented in the IoV. However, the performance of the FL suffers from the failure of communication links and missing nodes, especially when continuous exchanges of model parameters are required. Therefore, we propose the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as wireless relays to facilitate the communications between the IoV components and the FL server and thus improving the accuracy of the FL. However, a single UAV may not have sufficient resources to provide services for all iterations of the FL process. In this paper, we present a joint auction-coalition formation framework to solve the allocation of UAV coalitions to groups of IoV components. Specifically, the coalition formation game is formulated to maximize the sum of individual profits of the UAVs. The joint auction-coalition formation algorithm is proposed to achieve a stable partition of UAV coalitions in which an auction scheme is applied to solve the allocation of UAV coalitions. The auction scheme is designed to take into account the preferences of IoV components over heterogeneous UAVs. The simulation results show that the grand coalition, where all UAVs join a single coalition, is not always stable due to the profit-maximizing behavior of the UAVs. In addition, we show that as the cooperation cost of the UAVs increases, the UAVs prefer to support the IoV components independently and not to form any coalition.

Joint Transmission Reception Point Selection and Resource Allocation for Energy-Efficient Millimeter-Wave Communications

In this paper, we study the joint transmission reception point (TRP) selection and resource allocation problem to maximize the weighted sum energy efficiency under imperfect channel state information (CSI) for an uplink mmWave network considering beam training overheads and delay constraints with and without inter-beam interference, respectively. First, to guarantee the delay constraints of all UEs, we use the worst-case approach to cast the considered problem to a deterministic optimization problem. Then, for the scenario without inter-beam interference, the product of transmitting and receiving beams and the power allocation scheme for each pair of UEs and TRPs are derived iteratively, where the former is obtained by some relaxation operations under given power allocation policy, and the latter is searched by bisection under given beamwidth selection policy. After that, Kuhn-Munkres algorithm is used to find the joint TRP selection and resource allocation policy. For the scenario with inter-beam interference, coalition game is proposed to solve the considered problem, where UEs form coalitions to select their respective serving TRPs. At each iteration of the coalition game, the beamwidth control and power allocation are performed successively, where the transmitting and receiving beamwidths are solved by particle swarm algorithm under given power allocation policy, and the power allocation strategy is designed by a novel cooperative cost mechanism under given beamwidth selection policy. Finally, extensive simulation results are provided to verify that the proposed schemes achieve better weighted sum energy efficiency than existing schemes.

Use of target-costing and kaizen-costing to ensure effective cost management in interorganizational relations of agribusiness organizations

The article, based on the theoretical analysis, gives definitions of inter-organizational cooperation, inter-organizational management accounting, cost calculation system within the framework of interorganizational relations. Peculiarities of calculation of cost of interorganizational cooperation are disclosed, accounting practices of target-costing and kaisen-costing calculating system are described. The advantages of introducing and using inter-organizational accounting and a cost calculation system based on target costing and kaisen costing have been identified. Possible problem areas are identified when introducing these calculation systems into the practical activities of agro-formations.

Interplay between coopetition and institutions: How Japanese airlines enhance bargaining power

Organisations engage in coopetition, the simultaneous pursuit of competitive and cooperative activities, because of various environmental factors. The concept of coopetition continues to gain attention as global competition increases. However, the analysis of the influence of institutional elements on coopetition has been limited. This study bridges this gap. We use a case study to examine the coopetition framework among competing Japanese airlines formed to negotiate with major institutional elements: a monopolistic supplier and a government regulatory authority. First, this study identifies the mechanisms through which institutions promote coopetition. The findings point to coercive isomorphism and external hazard as influential institutional mechanisms; through coercive isomorphism, the shared benefits increase, and the cost of cooperation is reduced; through external hazard, organisations are encouraged to unite, and coopetition is promoted. Second, the study identifies the mechanisms through which organisations in coopetition enhance their bargaining power. Specifically, we find two sources of enhanced bargaining power: intensified pressure as a larger group and improved persuasiveness with consensus. These findings have important implications for the theory and management of co-operative organisations, such as for the interaction between co-operatives and institutions, since the coopetition framework we analysed has characteristics close to the values and principles of co-operatives.